Mayer v. State

494 S.W.3d 844, 2016 WL 1389830, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 3612
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedApril 7, 2016
DocketNO. 14-14-01011-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 494 S.W.3d 844 (Mayer v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mayer v. State, 494 S.W.3d 844, 2016 WL 1389830, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 3612 (Tex. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

OPINION

Marc W. Brown, Justice

' A jury' convicted Margaret Mayer of the offense of failure to stop and render aid in a case involving death.1 Appellant chal[846]*846lenges her conviction in five issues. We affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

On the night: of December 1, 2013, complainant Chelsea Norman was struck by a vehicle while riding her bicycle on Waugh Drive in Houston. The vehicle that struck Norman did not stop. After the accident, two other motorists noticed Norman lying in the street and called 911. Norman entered the hospital with serious injuries, including swelling in her brain; Four days later, Norman died.

Prior to the accident, appellant was at a bar in the Montrose area of Houston. Appellant left the bar with David Wilkinson, who testified that he intended to follow appellant in his own car as she drove home. Wilkinson discovered that he needed to gas up his car, but did not know the area well, so he decided to park his car and walk in search of a gas station. Appellant attempted to parallel park her truck near Wilkinson’s, but sideswiped his car as she was parking. Wilkinson walked away in search of the gas station. When he returned, appellant was gone. Wilkinson drove around looking for appellant, but could not find her. His attempts to contact her by phone were also unsuccessful. Wilkinson finally proceeded to his own home.

Later that night, Wilkinson received a phone call from appellant, who asked Wilkinson to come over to her apartment. When Wilkinson arrived, appellant was outside with her neighbor, Jamie Bollinger, examining her truck. Wilkinson testified that appellant was visibly distraught and that she said she could not remember what had happened, but that she thought she hit something on her way home. Wilkinson noticed that the truck’s windshield was damaged and also saw a piece of blue cloth on the ground in front of the truck. Bollinger testified that defendant was stumbling when she arrived at home and was visibly upset because she thought she had hit something, on her way there. Bol-linger noticed damage to the truck’s windshield and passenger mirror. Using a flashlight to inspect the ■ damage further, Bollinger noticed damage to the bumper of the truck and a' square piece of denim lodged in the corner of the truck’s hood. Near the truck’s headlight, Bollinger discovered a “decent amount” of “yellow goo-py material.”

The next day, Bollinger saw a Facebook post describing the accident involving Norman and shared this information with appellant, Appellant told Bollinger that she would turn herself in. After noticing a few days later that appellant had the windshield and headlights on her truck repaired, Bollinger inferred that appellant was not going to turn herself in, so she decided to contact the police. Bollinger called Crime Stoppers and reported her suspicion that appellant had been involved in .the accident that killed Norman. The day after the accident, appellant also told her coworker, Kellie Clark, that she had been involved in an accident and believed that she hit something or someone after getting lost on her way home. After seeing the news reports about complainant’s accident, Clark also called the police and told them that she thought appellant had -hit Norman that night.

After receiving these tips, police pursued appellant as a suspect. Détective Y. Estrada interviewed Clark and gathered a description of appellant’s vehicle as well as contact information for appellant.-. Detective Estrada went to appellant’s workplace to speak with her and recorded their conversation. Appellant told Detective Estrada that she was “trashed” on the night of December 1 and had been involved in a car accident. Detective Estrada also exam[847]*847ined appellant’s truck and photographed it. Detective Estrada saw no damage to the windshield because it had been replaced. Detective Estrada did, however, notice damage to the mirror on the passenger side of the truck as well as some damage to the hood of the truck and to the bumper and undercarriage of the truck. This damage appeared to be consistent with damage from a collision between a vehicle and a cyclist. Detective Estrada obtained a search warrant for the truck, which was eventually seized and brought to the Houston Police Department’s vehicle examination building.

At the vehicle examination building, Officer A. Holmes took photos, collected paint samples, and collected a swab of the yellow substance. Officer Holmes testified that the substance appeared to him to be body tissue or body fluid of some kind. The swab was prepared and the DNA contained in the swab was profiled by lab technician Ben Cambridge and compared to a known sample of Chelsea Norman’s DNA. Analyst Lloyd Halsell testified that Norman could not be excluded as a contributor to the sample and that the genetic markers found in the substance and in a known sample of Norman’s DNA matched across 15 locations. Halsell also testified that the probability of observing Norman’s exact DNA profile was one in 820 quintillion, meaning that in order to find such a combination, one would have to “put together approximately 100 billion earths.” In support of Hal sell’s testimony, the State offered into evidence the third of three reports setting out the results of the DNA testing. Appellant objected to the admission of this report,- renewing her objection from a pre-trial “motion in limine,” which asserted that; under the Confrontation-Clause, the report should not be admitted unless appellant was allowed to cross-examine Peter Lentz, a former employee of the crime lab where the testing was performed. The trial court overruled appellant’s objection. Later in Halsell’s testimony, the State offered the first and second reports that corresponded with earlier testing of samples from the same swab. Appellant did not object to the admission of these reports.

Finally, Devin Stasicha, a forensic scientist with the Texas Department of Public Safety Houston Regional Crime Lab, testified regarding foreign paint samples found on both appellant’s truck and Norman’s bicycle. .Stasicha testified that the unknown paint samples collected from the truck did not originate from the bicycle. Likewise, Stasicha testified, the unknown paint samples on the bicycle did not originate from the truck. Stasicha testified that there was no evidence that any paint had transferred, from the bicycle to the truck or vice versa.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty and the trial court assessed a sentence of 15 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division. Appellant timely filed a notice of appeal.

Analysis

Appellant presents five issues on appeal: (1) that the State’s evidence was legally and factually insufficient to prove that appellant. intended to be involved or knew she was involved in an- accident that resulted in a person’s death; (2) that the State’s evidence was factually insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant intended to be involved or knew she was involved in this particular • collision with complainant; (3) that the unavailability of factual sufficiency review on direct appeal of criminal convictions in Texas violates the Constitutional guarantees of Equal Protection and Due-Process; (4) that the trial court violated appellant’s Confrontation Clause right? when it admitted testi[848]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
494 S.W.3d 844, 2016 WL 1389830, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 3612, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mayer-v-state-texapp-2016.